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2014-07-05

This Week's Prayer

On this weekend of celebration and fireworks on behalf of our nation, let us give thanks.

We are grateful for our homeland of resources, wealth, opportunity, and relative stability.

We are grateful for our homeland that affirms that we are all created equal, that we are endowed with unalienable rights, that our government is accountable to us.

Let us also today remember the dispossessed, without a homeland in which they can be at home.

We remember in prayer 50 million refugees in the world today, driven from their homes by privation, hunger, or conflict.

We remember the 2.5 million people in Syria who have fled and the 6.5 million displaced.

We remember the 75,000 people in Pakistan who, in the last two weeks, have been forced to flee their homes because of a military offensive in the North Waziristan tribal region.

We remember those in refugee camps in Chad, whose food rations have been reduced by up to 60 percent.

We remember 338,000 refugees in Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritania and Uganda whose rations have been reduced by five to 43 percent.

We remember 10,000 people in Iraq displaced from predominantly Christian communities near Mosul.

We remember 54,000 displaced by conflict in Ukraine.

We remember the thousands displaced by fighting in Central African Republic.

We remember the 280,000 in Haiti who are still in camps after the 2010 earthquake -- over four and a half years later.

We remember all those, throughout the world seeking asylum, seeking a home of peace and opportunity.

On this weekend for celebrating the American Revolution for independence, may we commit ourselves anew to the completion of the revolution that will bring to all a home and homeland of justice and peace.

1. Openness to New Truth. "Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that revelation is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism." Our religious tradition is a living tradition because we are always learning.

2. Freedom. "All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion." We freely choose congregational relationship and spiritual practice. We deny infallibility and resist hierarchical authority.

3. Justice. We are morally obligated to direct our "effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."

4. Institution Building. Religious liberals "deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation....Justice is an exercise of just and lawful institutional power." Institution building involves the messiness of claiming our power amid conflicting perspectives and needs, rather than the purity of ahistorical, decontextualized ideals.

5. Hope. "The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."(For Adams's full text, see HERE. For Liberal Faith, see HERE.)